Sacramento Kings starting point guard Isaiah Thomas has beaten the odds for his entire basketball career and now he’s set to get his first big payday.

The Kings recently extended a qualifying offer to Thomas making him a restricted free agent, and league sources tell PBT that as many as five teams have expressed interest in making an offer to steal away the point guard.

The Pistons, Heat, Lakers, Mavs and Suns have all expressed interest, with the Pistons showing the most interest to date and numbers starting in the three-year, $24 million range. Talks with teams in playoff contention have started in the $6-7 million per-year range.

Thomas averaged 20.3 points and 6.3 assists per game last season while hitting 45.3 percent of his shots. He ranked second for the Kings in win shares with 7.7, just behind DeMarcus Cousins at 7.9 and ahead of Rudy Gay at 4.5, with the rest of the team far behind the trio.

Last season, Thomas also became the 29th player in league history to have averaged 20 points and six assists in a year with a 20.0 Player Efficiency Rating (PER). The Kings were 3.9 points per possession better defensively with Thomas on the floor last season.

A couple Hawks – Al Horford (26 points and 15 rebounds) and Jeff Teague (27 points and 11 rebounds) – played well as Atlanta jockeys for playoff positioning with the Bucks, but we’re less concerned with the bottom half of the Eastern Conference playoff picture than a vintage performance by an all-time great, helping a teammate and a historic streak.

Third Star: Tim Duncan (25 points, 13 rebounds, 6 assists, 4 blocks)

Duncan hadn’t posted the above numbers since winning his last NBA Finals MVP in 2005, but he’s now done it twice this season. It’s easy to understand how Duncan was one of the game’s best big men at age 28, but how is he still doing it at age 36? He is a marvel.

Second star: Brook Lopez (38 points on 22 shots, 11 rebounds)

Lopez came up big, shooting 11-of-13 in the restricted area, and helped someone who went home. In Deron Williams’ return to his hometown of Dallas, Lopez complemented Williams’ 31-point output by scoring on five of Williams’ six assists.

Thanks to Heat’s run, a team 11.5 games up for the No. 1 seed cares about playing a team 12.5 games back from the No. 8 seed, and that means LeBron is locked in. That’s a win for anyone who enjoys watching great basketball.

The NBA is set to release its official 2011-12 schedule later this evening, during a program which will be broadcast on NBA TV at 7 p. m. ET. But one team’s schedule has leaked in its entirety, and it shows that plenty of fans won’t be happy with the way things shake out.

The Phoenix Suns’ 2011-12 schedule was obtained by Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic, and has been posted on the paper’s website. We already knew going in that not every out-of-conference team would be seen in every NBA city, and the Suns are one team that certainly seemed to get the short end of that stick.

The NBA let us know ahead of time that as far as non-conference scheduling would go, home teams could expect to play three teams two times (one home, one away), play six teams one time at home, and play six teams one time on the road. So, there will be some teams in the West who don’t host the best teams featuring the biggest stars of the East, and vice versa. The Suns? They don’t host almost any of them.

LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and the Miami Heat will not be coming to Phoenix, nor will the reigning MVP Derrick Rose be visiting with his Chicago Bulls. Dwight Howard (if indeed he remains in Orlando this season) won’t be coming to town either, and neither will the Boston Celtics.

Most importantly to Suns fans, perhaps, is the fact that Amar’e Stoudemire won’t be back for the second time as a member of the New York Knicks.

The Suns aren’t likely to be the only team affected by the schedule this way, and they won’t be the only team affected by the loss of ticket sales from the guaranteed sellouts that these star-laden teams would provide. They’re just the first example of how the shortened season is going to impact fans in most markets who will be denied the chance to see the NBA’s biggest stars play in person.

It wasn’t easy for the Miami Heat from the opening tip, and they made it perhaps more difficult than necessary down the stretch. But when all was said and done, Miami pulled away with a well-earned 97-89 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 1 of the 2011 playoffs.

And in a game where Philadelphia held LeBron James and Dwyane Wade in check by limiting them to a combined 10 of 27 shooting, it was Chris Bosh who helped provide the consistency the team needed to come away with this win — at least after the first quarter.

The Sixers came out aggressive and hot to start the contest, with Elton Brand leading the way down low. Brand scored 11 points on 5 of 7 shooting to help his team jump out to a 14-point first quarter lead, but Bosh adjusted, and limited him to just six points the rest of the way.

“I just tried to front him in the post, work him off the block a little bit,” Bosh said of his defensive adjustment. “I just kind of wanted to take that away, take away his easy touches. There were a couple times where they caught me off guard and he ducked in, and that was my mistake. But after that I was just conscious of it and aware of it, I just knew that eventually he was going to try to move into his sweet spot, so I just wanted to have some resistance.”

The Heat went to a zone defense for a stretch in the second quarter, which also helped limit Brand and the Sixers’ ability to get easy scoring inside. That spark sent Miami on a huge 16-2 run, one that put them up by seven late in the second period, and put the game in their hands.

“We did a poor job in the beginning of the game starting out with our man to man defense, and we just wanted to show them something different,” Bosh said. “We got two or three or four stops, and we just wanted to stick with it.

“I think that gave us some momentum into our man (defense), and that’s our bread and butter; that’s what we work on. That got us going and gave us a lot more confidence the rest of the game.”

That confidence lasted almost all of the third quarter, as Miami built its lead as high as 16 points — thanks to 10 points in the period from Bosh. But the Sixers wouldn’t quit, and got 12 points off the bench from Thaddeus Young in the final period, along with two critical back-to-back three pointers from Jrue Holiday that helped bring Philadelphia back to within a single point with 2:23 remaining. But that’s as close as the Sixers were able to get, thanks to the aggressive play from Wade and James down the stretch that resulted in either tough makes or trips to the free throw line that enabled Miami to seal it.

But none of it would have been possible without the solid and consistent play from Bosh, who was big for much of the game while James and Wade struggled at times offensively. Bosh, however, wasn’t willing to take too much credit afterward.

“I don’t read too much into too many games,” Bosh said. “It’s one of many; we expect to make a long run. Me personally, I don’t want to put too much on it because I just want to go out there and keep doing what I’ve been doing.”

James, though, had no problem summing up Bosh’s impact on this one, and did so with a much grander statement.

“CB’s the most important player on our team,” James said. “He brought it. It was great to see.”

Hawks 93, Heat 89 (OT): These two teams combined to take 61 shots from three on the night even though combined they made just 14 (23 percent). That kind of sums up this game — a lot of bad decisions and missed shots. This game was very entertaining. It was filled with sloppy but it was still fun to watch.

Al Horford sprained his ankle in the second half but said after the game is was not that serious. We’ll see what the reports are as Wednesday wears on but it doesn’t sound bad.

Early on Atlanta had its chance – Miami without Chris Bosh started Joel Anthony at the four and the lack of offense at the spot really hurt the Heat. Bosh is not the best Heat player but he may have the biggest drop off of talent behind him. Miami scored just 11 first quarter points and shot 31 percent for the half. But the Hawks didn’t take advantage — they ran a slow offense, pounded the ball a lot and set up isolations that played into the hands of the Heat defense. In essence, they were still the Hawks.

Then in the second quarter the Heat went small, moving LeBron James to the four spot and they started get out in transition (for a team full of athletes the Hawks are shockingly bad at transition defense). After a 12-0 run you had a game again.

It was a thrilling end of the game filled with more slop. There was Mo Evans taking a bad three-pointer then committing a foul at midcourt as the Heat came back up. The Hawks ran a beautifully designed pick-and-roll open for an ally-oop dunk and Joe Johnson threw a lob pass off the top of the backboard.

The Heat got a last shot to win in regulation and it was a Wade isolation that went nowhere and led to a cross-court pass to LeBron for a very deep three. Not pretty.

It wasn’t all bad. LeBron, back from injury, made some quality plays in overtime, a big three and a driving layup. But the erratic Hawks attacked the rim and had one of their strong stretches for those five key minutes and got the victory. Jamal Crawford and Joe Johnson looked sharp when it mattered.

Fun little stat courtesy ESPN’s Tom Haberstroh: Joel Anthony had 16 rebounds (8 offensive) and no shot attempts. The only other players to do that in the modern era: Dennis Rodman and Wilt Chamberlain.

Bobcats 83, Bulls 82: The winning team in this game shot 40 percent and was 0-of-13 from three. It fits our sloppy theme for the night.

The Bulls were on the fourth game in five nights and playing without Carlos Boozer (making the starting front line Taj Gibson and Kurt Thomas), but they put up a fight. Derrick Rose almost carried them with 33 points. The Bulls just made some mistakes of execution at the end. Such as Ronnie Brewer passing up a layup to kick out to Luol Deng for a three. An open three, but no coach wants you to pass up a layup for a three (not even Paul Westhead).

For the Bobcats, that’s two wins over the Bulls in a week. Wins are wins, doesn’t matter how they come. Charlotte made the plays in the clutch — Stephen Jackson had a key fade away from the elbow, Gerald Wallace played his best ball at the end.